Dmytro KARAN,
Chaplain of the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
"THIS IS THE REASON BEHIND THIS EXISTENTIAL WAR —
WE HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXIST
BECAUSE THEY HAVE NAMED THEMSELVES US.
BUT IF WE EXIST, THEN WHO ARE THEY?"
I am an archpriest who previously served as a priest at the Holy Protection Church in Podil, Kyiv. This is a church of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, our local church, which was established in 2018 and received the Tomos of Autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarch in early 2019. Within the church structure, I hold the position of Deputy Head of the Synodal Department of Military Chaplaincy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Vasyl MISHCHUK (Dnipro, Ukraine):
"MY GRANDFATHER IS ONE OF THE FEW
WHO SURVIVED THE EXECUTION
AT THE LUTSK PRISON"
I was born in the Kherson region in 1960. My parents were originally from Volyn, a village called Vorotniv near Lutsk. They were repressed. My father was sentenced in 1939 under Article 54-11. I looked into this, and at the time—based on the criminal code of the 1940s—this article was called "for organizing an armed uprising against Soviet power," punishable by execution or exile. My father, born in 1923, was just 16 years old, and such an article was applied, essentially, to children.
Father Ivan KATKALO,
a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine
(village of Vikneno, Cherkasy region, UKRAINE):
"EVERY PERSON MUST LEARN
TO SERVE OTHERS"
My family had a wise grandfather, so during the Holodomor, no one in our family died of starvation. They swelled, yes, but no one perished. Grandfather even took in his sister’s daughter and his brother’s son, along with his own seven children—nine kids in total. Including the adults, there were 11 people in the household, and not one of them died. But how did they survive? Grandfather dug a pit in the cellar and buried grain there. When the searches came, they probed the ground all around but found nothing.
Mykola BENDIUK,
Head of the Art Cluster of Ostroh Academy,
Artist-Restorer (Rivne, UKRAINE):
FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION,
MY FAMILY FOUGHT
FOR AN INDEPENDENT UKRAINE
My entire family was part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA); there was no one in the Soviet army. My grandparents suffered for an independent Ukraine. In 1943, my maternal grandfather was executed by the Germans, and their house, along with my grandmother, was burned down due to their connection to the UPA. My mother was left an orphan at the age of three and had to move from one relative’s home to another. It was the same on my father’s side. In Derman, Red Army soldiers—mostly NKVD troops—surrounded my grandfather’s farmstead during the night, before the Battle of Hurby, and set it on fire.
Valentyna VLASENKO
(Dnipro, UKRAINE):
“HE WAS SWOLLEN FROM HUNGER,
AND HE DIDN’T GET UP UNTIL HE DIED”
As a result of forced grain procurements and the policy of collectivization carried out by the Soviet authorities in Ukraine, during the winters of 1931-1933, even food grain was confiscated in many collective farms. This led to mass famine, which claimed the lives of millions of people. According to estimates by Ukrainian historians, nearly four million people died in Ukraine from famine in the 1930s. The Holodomor was openly discussed only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A teacher from the town of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region, Oleksandra Radchenko, received ten years in labor camps in 1945 for defaming the USSR – during the 1930s, she kept diaries describing the Holodomor in the Kharkov region. Some of her diaries were published only in 2007 in the book "Declassified Memory."
Marta HRYTSIAK and Taras ROMANIUK,
daughter and grandson of Yevhen Hrytsiak,
one of the leaders of the 1953 Norilsk camp uprising
(village of Ustia, Kolomyia district, UKRAINE):
"THE UPRISINGS IN NORILSK, VORKUTA, AND KENGIR WERE, IN FACT, THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE SOVIET SYSTEM"
"We see that Russia still does not abandon its attempts to destroy Ukraine. We understand that this is destruction, not just occupation or some form of annexation. They are trying to erase even the memory of Ukraine's existence. But we are fighting and believe that Ukraine will be free from Russian oppression, that Ukrainians will stand among European nations, representing their culture, language, and the values that we have always had, still have, and will continue to hold."
Vasyl DUDKO
(Dnipro, UKRAINE):
“68 FAMILIES WERE FORCIBLY
RELOCATED FROM OUR VILLAGE…”
I was born on June 17, 1958, in Camp No. 3, Zeya District, Amur Oblast, Russian Federation. My parents were repressed during the mass deportations of Ukrainian families from western Ukraine to the Far East. My father and mother, along with my grandfather and three-year-old Anna, my older sister, were taken to Amur Oblast. During the journey, my sister fell ill and nearly died. As a result, she had to learn to walk twice – once after being born and again after recovering from her illness. They traveled for two months, enduring the cold.
Ivan DREMLYUGA,
Head of the Regional Society of Political Prisoners and Repressed, Chair of the Regional Rehabilitation Commission under the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration:
“WE HAVE PEOPLE
WORTHY OF A PEDESTAL”
As a result of the mass deportations during dekulakization and later Stalinist repressions, Ukraine's population sharply declined. Now, a demographic crisis is catastrophically approaching. This is why it is essential to talk about repressions, remember them, and, most importantly, draw conclusions from our historical past. Without its own state, a nation cannot survive!
Zhanna KRYZHANOVSKA,
daughter of the repressed Mykola Bereslavsky
(Dnipro, UKRAINE):
"MY FATHER HAD NO ILLUSIONS
ABOUT SOVIET VALUES"
We are used to thinking that our patriots are mostly from Western Ukraine. However, both Levko Lukianenko and Viacheslav Chornovil—prominent leaders of the Ukrainian idea—were actually from Central Ukraine. My father was, in fact, from Southern Ukraine. I want to emphasize that my father’s national consciousness was formed not so much within the family—his mother was an ordinary village woman, an orphan, while his father was educated, and so was his paternal grandfather—but it was the teachers in his school, who were not locals, that shaped his national identity.
Eduard ANDRIUSHCHENKO,
historian, author of the book "KGB Archives: True Stories"
(Kyiv, UKRAINE):
"THE REPRESSIONS OF THE 1930s
WERE NOT ABOUT LOGIC
BUT ABOUT FEAR AND CHAOS"
"The KGB, like any other intelligence agency, conducted surveillance before making arrests: they eavesdropped, photographed targets, and gathered information from informants within the subject’s circle. All of this was compiled into operational files, initially called "formulary files" .
Dmytro SYNYTSIA,
rural teacher, retiree (Dnipro, Ukraine):
"YOUR REAL BIRTHDAY," - MY FATHER
SAID TO ME, - "IS THE DAY STALIN DIED"
I, Dmytro Dmytrovych Synytsia, was born in Vorkuta, in the village of Oktyabrsky, Komi ASSR, on March 13, 1956. The hospital where I was born served a dual function: it cared for both prisoners and the free employees, although the latter were 4-5 times fewer. In other words, it was a prison hospital. So, I can say that I was born in prison. My parents didn’t tell me much about this; I discovered the truth as an adult when I reviewed all the documents.
Olena LEGOSTAYEVA, Kaleriya POPOVA,
State Archive of the Dnipropetrovsk Region (Dnipro, UKRAINE):
"THEY SAY THAT "FILES" CONTAIN NOT ONLY INFORMATION BUT ALSO HEAVY ENERGY"
We carry out this work using two book scanners. Regarding the repressed individuals, there are 11, 441 cases, while the total number slightly exceeds 1.7 million. So far, very little has been digitized – less than 0.5 percent. Some cases consist of two or three volumes; in one case, there may be one or two individuals, but sometimes you open a file, and it contains a list of 50-60 people. For each individual, a questionnaire must be filled out – this martyrology includes 27 columns, and specific information must be entered into each one.
Yura ASTAKHOV (Boston, USA),
the son of one of the founders of the Soviet Union of Disabled People, Yuri Georgievich Astakhov, a first-group disabled person (in 1941, at the age of three, during the bombing of Moscow, he sustained a spinal injury, complicated by bone tuberculosis, which led to paralysis of his legs):
What was it like to live in the Soviet Union in
a family with disabled members?
Life was very difficult because any movement for my father was a problem. To get up from the floor to the chair, he had to jump. It was such physical labor. But this burden was just as heavy for my mom and for me. So many disabled people, who lived on the second floor, didn’t go outside for years. When I got older, I just carried them on my back. I remember when someone gave my father and me tickets to the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, and we tried to park the car, but it was forbidden near the Kremlin, and I carried my father on my back for one and a half kilometers to get to the Kremlin.
